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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are back – but the fact that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.